For the last two years the beautiful class A office across the street has stood completely empty. It was completed only as the market collapsed and since then has been a good search but vacant 60,000 sq. ft building. I figured sooner or later it was either going to start to lease up or the corporate developer would end up letting it go in foreclosure. In the last 3 months, they have begun to bring in tenants. Not much, just a few, but it’s a start.

Are we finally starting to see some movement in the US office market? If my anecdotal evidence above is correct we may finally be witnessing a slight bit of forward momentum. That would be a welcome relief in an asset class that has been crushed by the recession, except of course for medical office buildings, which have held up very well.

Over my sacred Sunday morning coffee I discovered the latest CoStar report detailing that my observations are indeed true. The report reveals that in the last two quarters in a row the US office market has posted positive net absorption of 5 million and 7 million sq ft respectively. Leasing activity has started to show significant activity and experienced the best quarter since the collapse.

The report went on to note that new office deliveries are at an all time low and that coupled with positive net absorption vacancy rates will begin to move lower. General US office vacancy decreased slightly down to 13.62%.

As the old adage states, ” One swallow does not a summer make”, however the CoStar report is welcome news and bodes well for eventual recovery of the US office market. That’s good because I was getting tired of looking at that empty parking lot.

Obviously, things can go wrong with group investing on real estate. I am not saying they can’t. But, with a group your risk is mitigated, you have people you can turn to when there is a problem and you can as a group buy a piece of real estate of substantial quality and value that you could never accomplish alone. Remember, one of the icons of American real estate The Empire State Building was built by a group of investors, not one man who refused to ask for directions when lost. That is real genius.

Mistakes Made by Commercial Investors

Some investors decided to refinance their $10 million commercial property for $8 million and get $1.5 million out tax-free! What seemed like a great deal at the time has come back to ruin the typical commercial property investment. The problem was that these loans needed to be refinanced after five years. Owners who pulled money out of their investments like this began down a path that has led to the troubles we are seeing now.

Fast forward from then to now and you’ll see that the entire economic climate has changed. Most sources of financing for commercial real estate have dried up. Owners with a property that needs to be refinanced are finding that unless the LTV ratio is 65% or less and the property is performing perfectly, it’s almost impossible to get refinancing for their commercial property investment.

You can’t tap into those hedge funds and private equity firms because many of them have gone out of business. So you are left with two options:

1) Create a workout with the existing lender where they refrain from foreclosing against your property in exchange for a slight increase in the interest rate, or other benefit that you can give the lender. In some cases the benefit to the lender is that they don’t need to take your property back. The truth is that the lender really doesn’t want to take back your property if they can avoid it.

2) Bring other investors into your deal by offering them a decent rate of return on their investment along with giving them a chunk of your equity. Make sure to contact a commercial property investment attorney who can help make sure that you meet all of the SEC guidelines if this is the path that you choose to go down.

What Makes a Safe Commercial Property Investment

The problem with many owners of commercial properties today is that they got into a deal with a bigger loan than they should have. Now, these commercial property owners can’t ride out the recession because the loans are coming due and they’re short, or worse, upside-down.

Investment rule #1

-Leave the equity in your property.

· Successful property owners don’t pull out their equity at the top of an up cycle; they leave the equity in their commercial property investment so they can ride out the downturns. The “commercial meltdown” doesn’t apply to property owners who left their equity untouched. While it’s true that the commercial property values have come down from a high peak. The typical commercial real estate investment is far more valuable today than it was 10 or 15 years ago.

Investment rule #2

-Stick with conventional lenders.

· By taking a short term hard money loan commercial owners placed themselves at the mercy of the fickle market. A conventional lender would not have financed more than 65 percent of the property value, allowing the owner with a cushion against fluctuating property values.

When structured correctly, your real estate investment may not provide you with an overabundance of excitement, but during times like these, a stable, performing real estate investment is just fine.